LONE WORKER PROTECTION
THE DROIDS YOU’RE LOOKING FOR
Graham Mackrell, managing director of Harmonic Drive UK, looks at how collaborative robotics is changing the way machines help the human workforce.
The recent release of Sphero’s impressive BB-8 Droid toy has amped up anticipation ahead of the Star Wars: Episode VII The Force Awakens film, and it’s easy to see why. The little droid speaks to our desire to increase our interaction with technology – and to have useful robots at hand to help out. This is not necessarily a new concept in industrial and automation settings, but it is advancing.
For a long time, the idea of a helpful robot that was an active member of your Rebel Alliance was confined to science fiction. In the real world, robots have been mechanical beasts locked away in cages, a tool to be used and controlled by an engineer. However, science fiction is slowly becoming science fact as we let the robots out of their cages.
Collaborative robots are designed, as the name suggests, to operate in the same workspace as the human workforce. This is driving increased accuracy and productivity for many businesses but it has also generated much debate around health and safety.
As recently as July this year, the rocky relationship between automation and people hit the headlines after a 22-year-old man was tragically killed in an incident involving a robot. Investigations concluded this was simply a tragic accident and the robot, which was not a collaborative machine, was not at fault. And yet, it led many to take a second glance at how safe employees would be if they integrated machines into the workforce.
The International Standards Organisation (ISO) has several standards concerning the use of robots, including ISO 10210-1 Safety of Industrial Robots and ISO 10210-2 Safety of Industrial Robot Integration.
Within the ISO standards there are four key aspects that govern human-robot collaboration. Stopped-state monitoring says a robot should stop when a human enters a scanned area and continue to monitor until the person leaves the space before starting again. Speed and separation-monitoring standards state the robot must slow down when a human comes near and should stop if a human comes too close.
In the face of the advancing nature of collaborative technology, a draft technical specification, TS 15066, is also in preparation to govern standards around collaborative robots.
Manufacturers of existing collaborative robots are using technology to go beyond the expected, employing detailed design and
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sensors to allow awareness of the slightest contact with a person and functionality that ensures robots stop in response to touch and move back.
To ensure consistent, reliable reactions in these situations the gears and drives in the robot have to be of the highest quality. It doesn’t matter how reliable sensors are if the robot arm cannot stop or move as it should. That’s why collaborative robot manufacturers use high precision gears with very low backlash, such as those manufactured by Harmonic Drive. These gears allow for highly accurate movements that can be repeated again and again with perfect precision.
This level of accuracy and repeatability gives peace of mind that collaborative robots can be relied on to react to their surroundings.
Technological advances have also made collaborative robots easy to operate and ‘teach’. Rather than employing an engineer to programme robots, collaborative devices can be led by the wrist and ‘taught’ or operated using straight forward menus. Anyone can be trained to operate them in a short amount of time.
Imagine being able to rest easy in the knowledge that the robots in your facility react to keep your lone worker safe and that the same employee is confident and able to control the machine. Isn’t that the true essence of productive, safe collaboration between man and machine?
harmonicdrive.de/en/home www.tomorrowshs.com
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